


Remember I Fell

by hearmerory



Category: Lucifer (TV)
Genre: Dom Chloe Decker, Established Chloe Decker/Lucifer Morningstar, F/M, Flashbacks, Hurt Lucifer Morningstar (Lucifer TV), Hurt/Comfort, Light BDSM, PTSD, Sub Lucifer Morningstar (Lucifer TV), under negotiated kink
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-05
Updated: 2020-03-14
Packaged: 2021-02-28 21:09:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,849
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23023783
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hearmerory/pseuds/hearmerory
Summary: Chloe wants to share a new sensation with Lucifer, and he wants to fulfill her desire, no matter what it costs him.
Relationships: Chloe Decker/Lucifer Morningstar
Comments: 6
Kudos: 180





	1. Chapter 1

“Lucifer, I’d like to try something,” Chloe ran a hand through his rumpled curls, letting her other hand explore his taught muscles, stretched a little against the silk bindings which kept him spreadeagled on the bed.

“Anything, Darling,” he breathed.

“You... you’ve told me you don’t want me to use the cane...” she trailed off as his dark chocolate eyes darted to her face in what she could only interpret as panic, “but I was wondering if you’d let me try,” her voice sounded rushed, higher than normal.

“Why?” Lucifer felt his heart beat irregularly.

“Well, it’s my favourite. And I know you said you didn’t want it, but maybe it’ll be different with me? I won’t really hurt you, you know that. Even though I can.” She still looked shocked at that newest revelation, and had been shocked every time he allowed her to tie him up.

“I... I know you won’t try to hurt me...” he let his voice fade out at he looked into her face. “If it is something you truly desire, then who am I to refuse you?” He nodded his permission, but Chloe didn’t miss the fact that he didn’t look her in the eye, or that his muscles got tighter, or that his face had set too long in that come-hither leer he had attempted. But she wanted to show him how fun her favourite instrument could be. How the sting could be joyous release, so much more so than the thud of his usual favourites.

“Thank you, Lucifer. I promise, this will be fun,” Chloe ran a hand down his abdomen and rubbed his belly, just how she knew he loved it, and his eyes slid closed in relaxation. The second she removed her hand, though, his eyes sprang open, his muscles clenched again, and his previously slack mouth slammed shut, his jaw clenching. “We don’t have to,” she whispered.

“Go ahead, Detective, I am yours to command,” his voice lacked the sarcastic bite he used outside of their bedroom, but she could still hear the layers behind it. And he had called her Detective. He hardly ever did that anymore.

“Let’s turn you over, okay?” She reached over his head and untied his wrists, then slowly ran her hands down his whole body to his ankles, untying them too. He shuddered under her hands, and his body responded to her touch. Once he was released, she saw the moment of decision in his eyes, where he knew he could stand up, knew he could end it, and chose not to. He rolled over and spread his limbs for her to retie, and she did so gently, never allowing her hand to leave his skin.

Lucifer buried his face in the pillow. Usually, faced with the prospect of getting hit with almost anything else, he would be making lewd comments, or arching his back to get closer to her and to her instrument, or twisting his head around to see what she was doing. Today, he lay still, and took some of the pillow into his mouth, biting down hard in preparation.

For the first time in minutes, her hand left his skin, and he felt her absence in every cell of his body. It wasn’t long before she was back, her hand finding his lower back and rubbing it slowly.

“I have it,” she said quietly, and he felt the cane gently touch to his back as she dragged the tip over his skin. He flinched, and his breath hitched in anticipation. “I’ll be gentle, I promise,” she whispered in his ear before she stepped away from him.

There was a moment of agonising silence as he waited, his eyes squeezed tight shut, his jaw clenching down so hard on the pillow he could feel his teeth ready to cut right through. And then he heard the whoosh of the cane flying through the air, and felt the white hot line of pain appear, not on his butt as he had expected, but across the left side of his upper back, just at the bottom of his wing scars.

Horror flooded through him as the searing pain spread out from the strike point, and before he could speak or move, the cane swooshed down again, on his other side, just under the symmetrical scar.

He felt the familiar sting and stopped breathing, the panic tightening in his chest as he desperately tried to block the voices from his head. A third stroke was half an inch higher on his left side, the middle of the line of pain dulled by numb scar tissue. Bile rose in his throat, and the voices swarmed in, louder and closer and just as clear as they had been that day.

The forth swoosh landed in a solid line at the top of the scars, at his shoulders, where his muscles were so tense that Chloe had been able to avoid hitting his spine.

He buried his face deeper into the pillow, trying to pretend he wasn’t crying, trying not to pull off his restraints and run from her. The fifth stroke hit just below the forth, two perfect lines a few centimetres apart. The sting from that was almost worse, blending with the rush of blood back to the forth strike, the two sensations at odds with each other.

“You did such a good job,” Chloe put down the cane and touched a hand to his shoulder. Usually, having her hands on him steadied him. But in that moment, she felt his body tense and tremble under her touch.

“Get off,” he growled, his face still buried in the pillow, his voice hoarse.

“Lucifer, are you okay?” His body curled in on itself, pulling the restrains off the bed posts as he curled up.

“Leave me alone,” he croaked as his shoulders started to shake.

“I’m not leaving,” Chloe insisted, climbing up onto the bed beside him, ready to scoop him into her arms as she so often did after these sessions, but he shied away, flinching so hard he tumbled off the bed onto the floor.

He hit the ground with a thud, and he was lost. The voices surged forward, and he put his arms over his head in a cowardly attempt to protect himself from further blows.

“Please! Stop!” His voice was so pain filled, so heart broken, that Chloe’s chest tightened and tears came to her eyes.

“Lucifer!” She squeaked, leaning over the bed to touch his back. The five red lines bisected his scars, and she wondered in a rush of panic if it had been a good idea to hit him there. It wasn’t a place they routinely avoided, but with an instrument he wasn’t familiar with... perhaps this had been a disaster waiting to happen. He cowered away from her before she even touched him, and she withdrew her hand sharply.

“Please... make it stop,” he whisper begged into the floor.

“It’s okay, it’s over. It’s over,” she intoned, biting down hard on her lip to stop herself reacting rashly. Slowly, he raised his head. His face was covered in sweat and tears, his eyes red rimmed and his pupils blown wide with anxiety. Blood trickled out of his mouth from where he had bitten down so hard he had broken skin. He was pale, panicked, and looked as though he had felt a lifetime of pain in the last few minutes.

“Lucifer? Can I touch you?”

“N-not from u-up there,” he stuttered. She had never heard him stutter like that, so unsure, so broken. She lowered herself down onto the ground, sat against the bed and opened her arms to him. Slowly, like an injured animal, she cajoled him into resting his head on her lap, and she carded her fingers through his soft hair.

“What happened?” She asked softly, “I’m so sorry.”

“Not you,” he whispered, “memory...”

“You had a flashback?” Concern rose in her. She had thought it was at least mostly about not liking the cane. But if five light strokes had pushed him into a flashback, then it was much much more than she’d thought.

“The... the day I Fell,” he whispered, and she strained to hear him, “I... I was brought up from the cells before Father.”

“Cells?” Horror and fascination filled Chloe. He had never gone into detail about this before. He nodded against her leg.

“First time I’d seen daylight in weeks. They... they set me down on the ground at his feet. The whole court was there. My brothers and sisters, and my parents,” he shuddered suddenly, and gripped her tight, “they all wore their robes, and I was naked. I still had wounds from the battle, but everyone else had been healed. Gabriel read the sentence. A commoners punishment for the Prince of Light... and then banishment. Eternal banishment.”

“Lucifer...” Chloe whispered, cupping his head in her hand. But he didn’t stop, didn’t seem to hear her. His voice got higher as he told her, his mind spinning down and down.

“Humans assume there’s no punishment in Heaven. But at least in Hell, you’re choosing your own punishment. In Heaven, Father chooses. He chooses everything. Father decided my fate before I was even brought to the court. They bound me, and I struggled against them. I was weak. I lost, and I was chained on my knees, bent forward so that I couldn’t look up at any of them. Micheal cut off my hair. I... my hair...” his voice hitched harshly, and Chloe felt him tense again.

“It’s okay, it’s okay, it grew back,” Chloe stroked his curls and he sobbed once. He sniffed and continued, as though in a trance, wanting her to know, to understand.

“Micheal cut my hair. And then it began... I had led a rebellion. I had corrupted almost a third of Heaven’s forces to my desire. I... they... the sentence was one... one lash for each corrupted soul, and one for each deceased. They used Micheal’s whip.”

Chloe gasped in horror. How many times had they hit him? It must have been hundreds. And a whip held such a similar sensation to the cane. Lucifer shivered again, and Chloe pulled the blanket off the bed and wrapped him up in it, holding his head on her lap as she worked.

“An angel’s most sensitive limbs are their wings, and by the time my brothers had delivered my sentence, the hall was covered in... feathers... and blood. I tried to look up at Father, to show him I was hurt, to tell him I was sorry. But he had already gone. He didn’t even watch his sentence carried out. Micheal and Rafael wrapped chains around my wings. They led me to the centre of the room. And Micheal cut a hole in the ground with his sword. It was blackness and fire. Far away, deep, deep down. I... I didn’t want them to push me. I wanted to go home, to apologize, to beg Father’s forgiveness. But Micheal started herding me towards the hole, and everyone in the room was stamping their feet and screaming their pleasure at my punishment. I believe I begged my brother. I didn’t want to go.”

Chloe felt his shoulders start to shake violently under the blanket, even as she stroked his head.

“They pushed me... and I fell,” he choked, “endless falling. I couldn’t use my wings. I fell faster and faster until the flames balled up around me,” his skin pulsed between perfect white, marred with the lines of Chloe’s cane, and vicious red, as though all of his skin had been burned and flayed away, “I had been on fire for minutes before I even landed in Hell. I made a crater as large as Los Angeles when I hit the ground.”

“And... that was it? You didn’t have a chance to state your case? Or ask for... ask for mercy?” Chloe’s eyes were filled with tears at the thought of the lost, beaten boy forcibly thrown from everyone and everything he knew, into a desolate, terrifying, foreign land.

“Father wouldn’t even allow me to pray. None of my siblings could hear me. Or at least, none replied. I... I was where I belonged.”

“You weren’t! You didn’t deserve that. No one deserves that.”

“You forget, Detective. I am the Devil. Evil personified. Anything good left in me was burned away by my Fall.” He didn’t raise his head from her lap, but his body stiffened.

“You’re wrong. They were wrong. Your father especially.”

“It was punishment!” He roared, his skin settling on red and raw, pushing away from her. She saw the tears in his bright red eyes, filled with more than Hellfire.

“How old were you?” She asked calmly, trying to get him to come back and sit with her. He was shaking.

“Hundreds of thousands of years old,” he scoffed, “I had lit the sun and the stars, and pulled together the fabric of the universe thousands of years before my Fall.”

“I mean comparatively. To a human.”

“I...” his human face settled back in, “perhaps fourteen.” Chloe choked.

“Lucifer, nothing we do when we’re fourteen is worth that kind of punishment.”

“I rebelled,” his fists clenched tight, “I led an army against my Father. I deserved...”

“What would you do,” she interrupted, “if Dan and I did that to Trixie? If we brought her in front of a group of other kids, stripped her and cut off her hair, whipped her dozens, hundreds of times, and then threw her out?” The thought was disgusting. Abhorrent. And she saw it on his face too.

“I would rip you limb from limb,” he said quietly, his eyes darkening, the fire rising in his irises, “no matter what you meant to me.”

“Because she couldn’t possibly deserve it. No matter what she did.”

“No... no, she couldn’t. But she’s not-”

“Not what? The Devil? You weren’t, either,” Chloe stood up and went to him, pulling him close. “You weren’t the Devil then. That came after. You were just like your brothers.”

“I... I deserved it...” he choked into her shoulder.

“Is that why you let me use the cane, even though you didn’t want me to?”

“S’not your fault I’m b-broken,” he shuddered, “if you enjoy...”

“No!” Chloe snapped a little too loudly. Lucifer sprang away, out of her arms, and backed up against the wall. “No, you are not broken. You don’t have to do things you don’t want, just because you think I’d enjoy them! Do you think I’m enjoying this, right now? Think I’m enjoying you telling me about your psycho family after I hurt you?”

“No, I’m sorry, I’ll stop. Let me make it up to you,” Lucifer had visibly shrunk away from her words like they were physical blows, hurt clear in his eyes. His skin shifted back to his angelic form, the fire in his eyes extinguished. He straightened up and went to her, caressing her hips as he knelt to kiss her nakedness.

“That’s not what I meant,” she said quietly, entwining her hand in his hair and pulling him back. “I didn’t mean that I didn’t want to have this talk. I didn’t mean I wanted you to stop feeling. I meant that I _wish_ you’d told me you didn’t want me to use the cane. Then I wouldn’t have used it, and you wouldn’t have had to go through this today.”

“But...” Lucifer didn’t want to say what he was thinking. He knew it would only upset her.

“What?”

“I...” he took a deep breath, still kneeling in front of her, her hands in his hair. “I did tell you.”

Chloe’s fingers tightened in his hair, and he closed his eyes, waiting for the blow. Not that he thought _she_ would hit him. But blows could always be expected.

“Fuck,” she said simply, closing her own eyes in regret. He had told her. Several times. He had given her a list of things he didn’t want months before, and she had teased him about how some of the specifics must have been mined from thousands of sexual exploits. The cane had been near the top of that list, right under whips and being chained down. He had told her, less explicitly, this evening. ‘ _If it’s something you truly desire, who am I to refuse you?_ ’ He had looked frightened. He hadn’t put up any of their usual pretense of playful fighting and sexual innuendo. He had called her Detective, always a clear warning sign. But she hadn’t noticed, and then he had just laid down, stiff as a board, and let her do something he didn’t want.

“Lucifer, fuck, I’m so sorry. You did tell me.”

“I... I want you to be happy,” he whispered.

“I can’t be happy if you’re not happy,” she whispered back, stroking the back of his head with her thumb. “It’s not your... it’s not your responsibly to fulfill my every desire, Lucifer. Not unless it’s something you want, too.”

“But...” his voice broke again, and she gathered him up in her arms.

“You don’t have to do that anymore,” she whispered, holding him tight.

It was a long time before they moved. Lucifer looked lost as she led him back to bed. He curved into her touch as she rubbed his favorite bruising cream into his back. He nestled his pale, tear stained face tight under her neck when she climbed in next to him and pulled the blankets over them. His breathing evened out into sleep after a few minutes of feeling her hand combing through his short curls.

It was only when she was sure he was out that she started to really cry. To really imagine the horrors he had suffered. To truly understand what so many people had asked of him, taken from him. What she had taken from him.


	2. Desire and Command

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There’s no music in Hell, and no choice in Heaven.

Lucifer woke up at dawn the next morning. Chloe’s arms were wrapped around him, and she clung to him even in sleep, her face stained with tear tracks. His mouth pulled downwards as he turned into her, curling up a little smaller against her body. He had made her cry. All she’d wanted was to do something she’d thought would be fun, and he’d ruined it.

As the sun started to rise in earnest, he moved gently away from her warmth, and slipped his pillow under her arm. She made a little snuffling noise and clung tight to the pillow, burying her face into it. Lucifer took clothes from the draw near the bed and crept out of the room, making a pit stop in the bathroom before entering the large living space. The piano gleamed from the middle of the room, and he was inexorably drawn to it.

He didn’t play, not wanting to disturb the detective’s sleep, but he allowed his fingers to softly depress the keys, and lost himself in thought. He hadn’t meant to tell her about his last days in Heaven. Hadn’t meant to share that burden with her. He had seen the heartbroken look on her face as he had pathetically gasped out the story. Shame twisted deep in his belly. She hadn’t deserved that. And he’d made her cry.

When Chloe woke up, it was to a cold silence. Lucifer was gone from beside her, leaving a pillow which smelled exactly of him. His perfectly balanced scent of tobacco, whiskey and heat. She ran a hand over her face, clearing her eyes of sleep, and went to search for her fallen angel. She didn’t have to look far. He was sitting at the piano, managing to look irresistible even in a baggy black sweatshirt she’d never seen him wear, and loose grey pyjama pants.

He wasn’t playing, but his hands rested on the instrument as gently as he always touched her, his long fingers softly stroking the black keys.

“I love when you play,” she said quietly. He flinched as though a bomb had gone off, his head whipping around to face her. “Sorry!”

“Oh, it’s quite alright, darling,” he intoned, even though he sounded a little out of breath.

“I didn’t mean to startle you,” she moved to him and sat down on the piano bench. He moved instinctively just enough to accommodate her, but without leaving any more space than was absolutely necessary between them.

“I’m usually not so easily startled,” he smiled his large, lusty smile, and it was only because she knew him so well that she saw that it didn’t quite reach his eyes.

“I know you’re not,” she sighed, resting her head on his shoulder. He didn’t withdraw, which could only be a good sign. “Listen, I’m really sorry. About last night.”

“No need, darling,” he kissed the top of her head, “I fear I may have been a little over dramatic.”

“No,” she ran her hand over his forearm, “no, you weren’t being dramatic. I’m genuinely sorry. I would never deliberately hurt you like that.”

“I know,” he shifted slightly away from her hand.

“Next time, please tell me? If I’m trying to do something you don’t want?”

“I...” she saw his face crease in confusion, “I’ll try.” Chloe sighed. He was still far too willing to let her walk all over him in the name of desire.

“You want to fulfill my desires, Lucifer?”

“Always,” he murmured.

“I never want to hurt you. I want you to enjoy everything we do together. That’s my first priority, always. Understand?”

“I...” Lucifer choked slightly, as, unbidden, unwanted, tears filled his eyes. No one had ever said anything like that to him before. No one had ever wanted his pleasure. Hundreds of thousands of people had desired his pain, or his body, or his favors. But no one had asked so plainly for just him.

“I love you,” she said simply.

“And I, you,” he rested his head on her shoulder, returning to his mindless stroking of the piano.

“Who taught you to play?” She asked after a while, realizing he was reaching the end of his emotional tether, and reaching for a topic she hoped was less charged.

“The piano?” He asked, pulling away from her. “I taught myself.”

“When?”

“A long time ago,” he shrugged. This time, she saw the shutters of evasion fall over his dark chocolate eyes.

“On Earth?”

“Oh yes.” He didn’t expand, and she pushed gently.

“You said once that Hell doesn’t have good music.”

“No. Sound echos wrong. It all distorts against the walls. Never made an instrument work down there.” He stroked the piano, his mouth twitching downwards. He’d always thought that his Father had designed that particular acoustic abnormality specifically to punish him.

“But there is music in Heaven, right? They’re all about harps and trumpets?”

“If music happened to be one of your assignments, then yes.” Lucifer ran his fingers across the wood of the open piano lid as though claiming it.

“Was it...” she trailed off, unsure if she wanted to ask, “did you play?”

“No,” he said, a little harshly, an edge of bitterness creeping into his voice. “No, I wasn’t allowed. No matter how many times I asked.”

“But... why?” It seemed inconceivable that someone so talented, someone with such a gift, could be barred from it.

“Father’s orders,” Lucifer spat, “Gabriel was the herald. He got to strut around with his damned trumpet, playing off key. Plenty of our younger siblings do indeed play harp, and most play flute. But not us. We were too special for that,” Chloe saw a flash of red in his eye.

“You wanted to play?”

“Of course I did! Sometimes... sometimes I’d hear the lesser angels, the ones so far below our Father’s interest that they would never need to leave Heaven, playing on the piano in the fountain room.” Chloe skipped over the idea of a fountain room and put her hand on his arm. “And I... I felt it,” he put his hand on his abdomen, just under his rib cage, his voice cracking a little, “I felt the music, right here... and it was all I wanted.”

“That must have been hard,” she said, lamely.

“Hard...” he muttered, “yes. It was hard. That was what started the rebellion, actually.”

“Huh?” He smiled at her confusion, her lack of eloquence.

“I asked Him to let me learn. It was the first time any of us had asked Him a question, about anything. Literally the first question anyone had ever asked Him. I asked if I could use my free time, after training and before performing my duties, to learn to play.”

“He said no?” Chloe guessed, her heart sinking.

“Of course He said no,” Lucifer sighed. “And that was the start. I badgered him for years about it,” his voice turned mocking and scornful as he imitated his younger self, “‘Please, Father, just let me touch it! It makes such a pretty sound! Please! What if I do all my work really, really well? Please can I play, Father?’ I was so _stupid_ ,” he emphasized his self disgust by banging his hand down onto the keyboard, ripping an awkward, jarring chord from the instrument. Instantly, he schooled his expression and caressed the piano lightly, as though in apology.

“You couldn’t be stupid if you tried,” Chloe smiled sadly.

“Well, it didn’t work out so well for me, now did it, Detective?”

“But how did you go from asking to play piano to starting a war?”

“A war?” He asked, surprised, “it wasn’t an war!”

“What was it then?”

“The human equivalent would be more like... a demonstration. By then, it wasn’t about music anymore. It was choice in general. Mother and Father withdrew from us. They spent all their time alone together, or fighting. My siblings and I... we were built to obey Father, and when he stopped giving instructions... we couldn’t do _anything_. We couldn’t travel between the planes. We couldn’t create things. We couldn’t do anything at all, and we were screwed, because He never came to us anymore. Everyone was going crazy, cooped up there. We... we weren’t designed to be without purpose. Fighting started. Little arguments at first. Amenadiel throwing Gabriel’s damned trumpet about a thousand miles when he’d been making his awful tooting noises for too long. Azrael pushing Uriel out of the sky for encroaching on her flying circle... things like that.”

“Sounds terrible, when you were all supposed to be doing real work,” Chloe knew how quickly Lucifer blew up at boredom. He could barely last three minutes in a conversation he didn’t find simulating. The idea of him floating around Heaven with nothing to do was achingly sad in a different way to his violent telling of the Fall.

“I was worst,” he admitted with a shrug, “Micheal and I, anyway. We had spent the last million years creating planets and stars together, and fighting battles with restless Eternals. Sitting on our arses in the city was practically unbearable. We started bickering over everything, and it wasn’t long before we were fighting. He was always stronger, but I was quicker, and lighter. We both won and lost our fair share,” he shrugged again, and then his shoulders dropped, “it was only after a few hundred years of waiting around for Father to tell us anything that I started gathering other angels. I’d always been the peacekeeper, so most of them felt they owed me something. I talked to a few of my siblings, but they were all set to wait another thousand years, if it meant not defying Father. But they were all going crazy! Half of us were walking around with bruises from fighting, and the other half were pacing like caged things. It needed to stop. And by then, I’d seen the humans Father was building. Seen how they were permitted to move and choose with freedom, and I’d watched my siblings grounded and restless for hundreds of years, while he petted these creatures who didn’t even need His instruction!”

Lucifer was tense again, his hands balled into fists even as he avoided looking at Chloe. So much for a less charged topic.

“So I brought everyone to the courtyard.” He stopped then, his voice cracking, “It... it got out of hand. We were in the main square, making noise. I’d tried so many thousands of times, for hundreds of thousands of years, to make Him listen to me, and I was determined that He would hear, even if He was hiding up in His tower. We lasted minutes before Micheal led our siblings in and tried to break it up. I... I didn’t know others had brought weapons. I had my sword, but only because I always had it. It was as much a part of me as my arm.”

“You hadn’t meant to fight?”

“No,” he breathed, his fingers silently flitting over the keys. “But it was chaos in seconds. We were outnumbered, and Micheal had all of my siblings on his side. We stood no chance.”

“And your Father? He just let it happen?” Chloe’s voice was filled with a painful mixture of anger and sadness.

“He _wanted_ it to happen!” Lucifer’s voice rose and broke, “nothing ever happened without Father’s knowledge and approval. We had waited years for him to tell us _something_ , just so that we could do anything other than sit there! He was just _waiting_ for me to slip up, _waiting_ for the chance to throw me out!”

“W-what happened?”

“The obvious, Detective,” he spat, wrenching himself off the piano bench and pacing like a trapped animal between the piano and the bar. “My siblings overpowered us easily, literally within minutes. Micheal, Gabriel and I used to spar together every day, so we knew each other’s fighting inside out. Between them, they overpowered me, and Micheal managed to fracture my wing. And my jaw, but that didn’t hurt nearly as much.”

Chloe had once spent almost a month spoon feeding Dan mush when he broke his jaw at the start of their marriage. Sure, Dan wasn’t an immortal celestial being, but he was pretty stoic with pain, and he had been in agony for weeks. If a wing hurt more than that...

“Gabriel smacked me in the face with that damned trumpet, and I couldn’t fight them any longer. Micheal...” Lucifer ran his hand through his already messy hair and pulled at the curls, “Micheal spat on the ground next to me, and told me Father wanted to see me. I couldn’t move. Raphael had got a couple of strikes in with his spear, and Amenadiel had caught me right across the stomach with his sword. I hadn’t been ready! I wasn’t going to fight!”

“Hey, hey, it’s okay,” Chloe reached for him, and he collapsed back onto the piano bench, his muscles taught and trembling, his breathing ragged.

“Micheal jammed his sword under my chin and made me look up. I could barely see from the pain and the head wound. All around, my people were screaming as my family slaughtered them. Idiot managed to cut deep enough to scar there, too. And when I didn’t answer him... I didn’t even know he was asking anything, I could hardly even hear... he just grabbed me. One fist in my hair, the other right over the fracture in my wing. He dragged me away, and I don’t think I even struggled. I could hear my brothers laughing at me, even as they killed my friends...” he spluttered, his voice fading as his muscles tightened beyond what Chloe thought should be possible. His back twitched in phantom pain from wings that were no longer there, as though the muscles below his scars were trying to summon his severed limbs. She waited several seconds for him to continue, but he seemed to have stopped even breathing.

“Lucifer,” she whispered, running her hand down his arm, “it’s okay.”

“I tried to fight again, when we got to the cells,” he continued, as though he hadn’t stopped speaking, as though his breathing wasn’t uneven and fast, as though his pulse wasn’t visible at his neck, “but Father had forged chains to keep Mother supplicated, so I was no challenge.” Bitterness rose like bile in his throat, and he rubbed at his wrists, where the ancient restraints had kept him prisoner.

“And they left you down there?”

“It... it was dark,” his voice broke again, “even darker than Hell. At least there’s fire in Hell. Heaven’s cells are cold. I couldn’t see my hands in front of me it was so dark. No one came. I had expected... I’d _hoped_ that Micheal would come. He comes off worst, in my last few days, but... he was my favorite. My twin.” Chloe pulled him tight against her as tears started to fall down his face. “But no one came.”

“Lucifer, why did they send you to Hell? I don’t understand why that was your punishment! It seems so insanely cruel.”

“Well that’s the big joke, isn’t it?” Lucifer smiled, none of it reaching his eyes. “I fought because we had no purpose, and no ability to choose our own. So He waited until I made a choice he hadn’t sanctioned, and gave me a job. The celestial equivalent of ‘I’ll give you something to cry about’. He loves object lessons, Father. Amenadiel tells me none of our siblings have questioned him since.”

“That’s... that’s...”

“Not very funny?” He cocked his eyebrow in an attempt at his normal swagger, but it didn’t quite work. Chloe scooted even closer to him and wrapped her hand groundingly around his forearm.

“Did any of your siblings visit you in Hell? Did Micheal?”

“No. Someone would be sent after me, whenever I managed to escape, to take me back down. But no one ever came to visit.”

“I thought only Amenadiel was in charge of... of keeping you down there?” Chloe’s lip curled in dislike. Lucifer’s brother might have grown a lot since then, but he was, in Chloe’s eyes, still at fault.

“The first few times, Micheal came. If I believed that my Father answered my prayers, I’d think He’d switched the assignment himself. But it’s more likely that Micheal just got bored of refracturing the damned wing and dragging me, over and over. Amenadiel, at least, only thrashed me when I provoked him, and we had at least some civilized conversation. Micheal would just kick down the door to whatever room I was in, get me in a headlock and punch me in the back until my wings released, break the damned bone and yank me down. Just like the first time, one hand in my hair, one hand pressing into broken bone.”

“Your twin did that?” Chloe was horror struck.

“I’d never tell Amenadiel that he was stronger than me, but Micheal... he proved it hundreds of times. I could never fight him long once he’d restrained me. Brute strength was always more his thing than mine.”

“He sounds like a dick,” Chloe said bluntly. Lucifer snorted in surprised amusement.

“I tend to agree, darling,” he stroked the piano again. “Trips with Amenadiel were more annoying, but it was less... painful. He’d usually let me finish up whatever I was doing. Five more minutes and all that. And then he’d let me fly down, rather than drag me. Micheal always flew me to the very top of the realm and just dropped me, but Amenadiel would fly with me all the way to the throne room before he left.”

“Micheal dropped you? After breaking your wing again? He let you fall?”

“It’s a much shorter fall from the top of Hell than it is from Heaven, Detective,” he said sadly, flexing his shoulders slightly, again as though in phantom pain.

“Still... I just can’t imagine a brother doing that.”

“Micheal is...” Lucifer hesitated, “Micheal always wanted to do what was right. And for my siblings, right and wrong is just Father’s orders. If Father tells you to do something, you do it. And if you do something and Father doesn’t stop you, then that means you were right.”

“That seems... kind of primitive.”

“I suppose it is. But they don’t have real free will, not like humans. They can never want to do anything other than what Father orders.”

“But you did?”

“Yes,” he paused, deep in thought, “it’s similar to you and I, you know. My desire ‘mojo’, as you call it, doesn’t work on you. Father’s mojo is control. He’ll tell you to do something, and suddenly it’s the only thing you’ve ever wanted. He’ll tell you not to do something, and you just... don’t want to do it anymore. But it didn’t really work on me. I wonder if that’s where He got His inspiration for you.”

“He...” Chloe paused, not knowing if she should say it, “He must have known you’d be lonely. His superpower thing sounds kind of shitty, doesn’t it? You’d never know if anyone around you actually liked you, or if you’d commanded it.”

“He didn’t care if we loved Him,” Lucifer started indignantly, but Chloe interrupted.

“Maybe He designed you immune to it to see if you could love Him. Maybe your whole rebellion was really painful to Him because He knew it was only His power stopping the others from following. Maybe He cast you out because He finally discovered that you weren’t going to follow Him, or love Him, if He couldn’t force you.”

“It’s... it’s not love,” Lucifer said quietly, barely breathing, “if it’s not a choice.”

“And I think maybe He started to realize that. It was a long time between your Fall and coming here. So maybe He made me so that you’d have the same thing. Someone who couldn’t be made to desire you, so that you could have someone chose to love you. Not because you told them to, or because they desired you. But just because I love you.” Chloe held her breath, hoping she hadn’t gone too far. She could feel the tiny tremors running up and down Lucifer’s arms.

“I... He...” he couldn’t seem to form words.

“If you were the only being in existence He couldn’t command to love Him, then I think he should have tried a little harder,” Chloe rested her head on his shoulder, and the trembling seemed to ease.

“If... if all of that is true...”

“Then I’m not a tool designed to screw with your head. I’m an olive branch.”

“No,” Lucifer said, resting his head on top of hers, “no, it means you’re just you. Infinitely valuable all on your own.”

“And _yours_ ,” she whispered, “for real. No strings. No mojo. Just... love.”

They sat in silence for a few minutes, and Chloe felt the tension rise off Lucifer in waves, building and crashing and ebbing away as he thought.

“Will you play for me?” She asked eventually.

“Of course, my love,” he whispered, coming out of his reverie to kiss the top of her head. Chloe sat up, giving him use of his arms. Without a beat, he started playing, his fingers drawing the music out of the instrument like he was born to it, at one with the piano. It was only a few bars in before she realized he was playing Eternal Flame, and she let out an awkward burst of laughter. He smiled for real then, nudged his knee into hers, and started to sing. He got a few lines in before her laughter died down.

“Do you feel the same? Or am I only dreaming?” He closed his eyes for a few seconds, his singing lifting her along before his voice started to break.

“A whole life... so lonely...” and then he stopped, his fingers stilling, the notes fading into nothingness as his long, musician’s hands fell into his lap.

“Come and ease the pain,” Chloe guided his hands back to the keyboard, her voice nothing on his but perfectly passable.

“I don’t wanna lose this feeling,” they sang quietly, together. He closed his eyes on the oh, letting his voice carry, deep and perfect. He stopped, pulling his hands back again, and turning towards her.

“I never get to hear you sing the chorus,” she whispered.

“Well, it’s a little on the nose, isn’t it? Spent enough time in eternal flames to know it’s not nearly as romantic as they make it seem,” she tried to match his expression to his words, but his smile didn’t seem fake, and he didn’t sound upset by it. He leant forward and pressed their foreheads together. “You love me? Of your own free will? I’m not forcing you? He’s not forcing you?”

“Yes,” she was tempted to say that she loved him, over and over, until he listened. But, without conscious thought, the second question was the one she answered. “Of my own free will.”

They melted together, and the piano was quiet.


End file.
